Michael Akerman

How do you occupy a goat? Build a tower for it. Portuguese winemaker Fernando Guedes da Silva da Fonseca built the first “torre das cabras” in the 1820s, a three-story stone tower surrounded with a spiral ramp made of logs.

Inspired by Fonseca, vintner Charles Back built a tower of his own at the Fairview Wine and Cheese Farm in South Africa in 1981 (shown here). Goats are intelligent, gregarious, and curious, and they like to climb, so Fairview offers the tower to a select few of the 1,000 goats in its winelands.

Inspired in turn, Illinois farmer David Johnson built a 31-foot tower in Findlay, Ill., for his 34 Saanen milk goats. “Goats love it, and people driving by can’t believe it,” Johnson told Farm Show magazine. “Goats are the most curious animals in the world, so they use the tower a lot. They come and go, passing each other on the ramp as needed.”

“People often ask if any goats ever fall off the tower, and I always tell them the answer is no because goats are very sure-footed. Once in a while we do get freezing rain, and then I use a portable torch to melt the ice from the steps.”

The South African tower has also been replicated in Norway and Argentina. Let’s hope they’re not planning a takeover.

The Rod of Asclepius, left, with a single snake, is the symbol of medicine. Unfortunately, a large number of commercial American medical organizations instead use the caduceus, right, which has two snakes. Asclepius was the Greek god of healing, but the caduceus was wielded by Hermes and connotes commerce, negotiation, and trickery.

The confusion began when the American military began using the caduceus in the late 19th century, and it persists today. In a survey of 242 healthcare logos (reported in his 1992 book The Golden Wand of Medicine), Walter Friedlander found that 62 percent of professional associations used the rod of Asclepius, while 76 percent of commercial organizations used the caduceus.

“If it’s got wings on it, it’s not really the symbol of medicine,” the communications director of the Minnesota Medical Association told author Robert Taylor. “Some may find it hard to believe, but it’s true. It’s something like using the logo for the National Rifle Association when referring to the Audubon Society.”

For our 30th episode, John Green tests 30 life hacks we read about on the internet to see if they work as promised.

The treats in this list are all totally edible, despite their appearance. They were designed mostly for Halloween parties, but if you are planning a get-together for the premiere of the new season of The Walking Dead this weekend, these offerings will fit the theme perfectly. The foods are arranged in order of least to most gross, so you can stop whenever you start to become queasy.

1. Sweet Cookies and Cream Cheese Ball Rat

This sculpture of a rat is made from cream cheese and cookies, for a sweet spread at your party. Roll the body in crushed cookies to give him fur, and trim with pink cream cheese frosting for the details. You find complete instructions at Hungry Happenings.

2. Anatomically Correct Chocolates

Visual Anatomy Limited offers medical illustrations and chocolate. While those two businesses don't appear to really mesh, the chocolates come in the shapes of bodily organs. You can get chocolate brains, hearts, livers, colons, ears, eyes, skulls, pancreases, kidneys, or other organs, in small or large sizes, or in assorted gift boxes. Some are even available on a stick!

3. Demonic Deviled Eggs

Let's take a little detour on the subject of deviled eggs. The term "deviled" means "spiced" eggs, which in modern times is achieved with mustard, pickles, and paprika -or other spices if you prefer. But they still have a devilish name, and they somewhat resemble eyeballs, so they fit in well with Halloween feasts. You can make them seasonal but innocuous by dressing them up as little pumpkins. Or you can go all out to make your eggs resemble the evil Eye of Sauron, like the egg pictured here. The look is dependent on food coloring and black olives.

Or you can try to hit a sweet spot in between innocent and frightening, with deviled eggs covered in spiders made from black olives.

4. Pizza Pie-eye

Beth Jackson Klosterboer at Hungry Happenings had a party once in which every treat resembled an eyeball! The main dish was an eyeball pizza, made with black and green olives arranged on a background of cheese. There were also three kinds of dip and meatballs that all resembled eyes.

5. Brains in a Jar Cupcakes

This dessert looks creepy, but it's actually delicious cake with brain-shaped frosting and a bit of raspberry jelly for blood, all stuffed on a jar. The instructions for making your own are at Living Locurto. The website has kindly included printable labels for your jars!

6. Sweet or Savory Specimen Jars

Photograph by Flickr user Windell Oskay.

These specimens in jars look pretty nasty, and the labels make them seem even worse. But believe it or not, they are all not only edible, but tasty! They contain unfamiliar fruits (lychees, jackfruit, tapioca), or other foods like sausages cut into odd shapes. The sweet treats are packed in syrup, and the savory items can be displayed in chicken broth. Your Halloween guests will be delighted, if they can get over the willies and try them out. Get the instructions at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

7. Zombie Brains Jello Shots

When you bite open these little brains, you'll find they are filled with delicious but frighteningly red raspberry sauce! If you serve a full platter of them, be sure to cut one open to show your guests what they are in for. The presentation makes all the difference! The gelatin is flavored with hazelnut and raspberry liqueur in addition to vodka, which both lend a bit of authentic coloring to the condensed milk-colored gelatin. The raspberry filling can be homemade, as the recipe is included, or you can take the shortcut of using raspberry pie filling.

A little raspberry syrup drizzled over the top completes the look. Just pretend you are a zombie, for which brain-eating comes naturally. These will work for your premiere party for The Walking Dead next weekend, or for any Halloween party. The complete instructions are at WikiHow.

8. The Noshing Dead: Bloody Banana Guts

These overripe bananas look thoroughly disgusting covered in brown sugar and food coloring, but they're tasty when spread on a graham cracker or cookie! This recipe was inspired by The Walking Dead visuals, but you don't need to think about that while you're eating. The recipe at Kitchen Overlord comes with a cute zombie story, too.

9. The Grossest Cupcake Ever

The cupcake you see here will be sold at the Eat Your Heart Out 2013 pop-up cake shop in London, England, open October 25-27. Food artists will be offering the world's most gruesome and delicious treats. These cupcakes are made by Twisted Fondant, a macabre, x-rated division of Fantasy Fondant. What makes them so gruesome?

They are called Mango Fly Larva Cupcakes. They are served with a glove and a pair of tweezers so you can do the deed, as shown in this photo series, which may be disturbing. Just keep reminding yourself that no matter what it looks like, this is all delicious cake and edible icing.

If you've made it this far, you may also want to check out our previous recipe roundups:
Gruesome Halloween Party Food
Creepy Halloween Party Food
Ten Terrific or Terrifying Treats for Halloween
9 Spooky Halloween Party Treats

An article in the Guardian Headquarters blog discusses the not very clear evidence for the link between computer games and violence and makes a comparison to the panic over ‘horror comics’ in the 1950s.

The Fifties campaign against comics was driven by a psychiatrist called Fredric Wertham and his book The Seduction of the Innocent.

We’ve discussed before on Mind Hacks how Wertham has been misunderstood. He wasn’t out to ban comics, just keep adult themes out of kids magazines.

However, his idea of what ‘adult themes’ might be were certainly pretty odd. This is Wertham’s testimony to a hearing in the US Senate.

I would like to point out to you one other crime comic book which we have found to be particularly injurious to the ethical development of children and those are the Superman comic books. They arose in children’s fantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again, while you yourself remain immune. We have called it the “Superman complex.” In these comic books, the crime is always real and Superman’s triumph over [evil] is unreal. Moreover, these books like any other, teach complete contempt of the police…

I may say here on this subject there is practically no controversy… as long as the crime comic books industry exists in its present form, there are no secure homes. …crime comic books, as I define them, are the overwhelming majority of all comic books… There is an endless stream of brutality… I can only say that, in my opinion, this is a public-health problem.

The ‘Superman causes sadism’ part aside, this is a remarkably similar argument to the one used about violent video games. It’s not a matter of taste or decency, it’s a public health problem.

In fact, an article in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings had a neat comparison between arguments about 1950s comic books and modern day video games which turn out to be very similar.

Moral of the story: wait for sixty years when the debate about violent holograms kicks off and they’ll leave you to play your video games in peace.
 

Link to ‘What is the link between violent video games and aggression?’
Link to article on video games and comic panics in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

In January 1961, a B-52 Stratofortress began leaking fuel near Goldsboro, N.C., and the crew were forced to eject before they could reach Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

They watched as the plane descended toward the tobacco farmland below carrying two 3.8-megaton nuclear weapons. As the plane broke up, it dropped both of them. One smashed into a muddy field, but the other deployed a parachute to slow its descent and activated five of its six arming mechanisms.

It stopped short of detonating, which is good, because it packed more than 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

“How close was it to exploding?” asked disposal team commander Lt. Jack B. ReVelle afterward. “My opinion is damn close. You might now have a very large Bay of North Carolina if that thing had gone off.”

Only three years earlier, a similar mishap had occurred over Georgia.

The next entry in the Ace Attorney series, Dual Destinies, will launch for Nintendo 3DS in North America and Europe Oct. 24, Capcom announced today.

In Phoenix Wright, players investigate crime scenes and present evidence before courts in order to solve cases. The game will be available at a "lower than expected" price of $29.99 in the U.S. and €24.99 in Europe. The Western edition will also include a costume pack and Turnabout Return, an additional episode already available in Japan.

Dual Destinies will be available as a downloadable title only in order to reduce the delay between the Japanese and English launch. Motohide Eshiro told Polygon Capcom will consider a physical release if enough fans push for it.

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Saints Row 4's newest add-on, the "GAT V" pack, is available free on Steam for today only, publisher Deep Silver announced.

The "GAT V" pack, released the same day as Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 5, focuses on fan-favorite Saints Row character Johnny Gat. The DLC includes outfits for Gat and Aisha, as well as a heavy machine gun and a gun that launches combat knives. It regularly costs $2.99, which is its price on PlayStation Network and the Xbox Games Store. The free offer on Steam expires at 3:01 a.m. ET on Sept. 18.

Deep Silver also released the "Wild West" pack today, also for $2.99. That DLC pack comes with two new outfits — a cowboy and a Native American woman — and a revolver.

You can watch a trailer for the "GAT V"...

Alfred E. Neuman was a meme that started in the late 1800s and was eventually co-opted by Mad Magazine. The “gap-toothed idiot” as he was called appeared in everything from advertisements to political posters. 

Click here for a good essay on it. 

thelittlestspook:

Vintage Alfred E. Neuman mask

“Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.” — Sydney Smith

Sometimes the news tips themselves hit the nail right on the head:

She's known by many on our realm as Short but her character is Azraela. She has been guild leader of Quel'Dorei's Realm first level 25 guild since she founded it in BC.

Why I'd like to nominate her has nothing to do with guild leading though. She's disabled like others you have covered before, and like past stories, it doesn't stop her from raiding, PvP, or any other part of the game.

What impresses me about Short is her concern for other disabled gamers. She recently started a YouTube channel called AbilityPowered where she covers tips on making WoW highly accessible. I asked her about it one day and found out since she started raiding not only is she disabled but she had raid-led colorblind, deaf and hearing-impaired raiders. She said she's had to adjust raiding assignments to make anyone with impairments more successful for years and is hoping it'll help other gamers do the same. I think she's pretty special.

Promising lead? After checking out Ability Powered Gaming, we'd have to agree -- this is one inspiration-powered lady. A resource node for disabled gamers that's matter-of-factly sprung from a welcoming guild intended for one and all ... Meet crusader for disabled gamers, community leader, and Ability-Powered gnome Short/Azraela.

Continue reading Ability Powered gnome builds resource node for disabled gamers

Filed under: Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame

Ability Powered gnome builds resource node for disabled gamers originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 12 Sep 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steam Family Sharing, an upcoming service from Valve, will allow Steam users to share their games with friends and family, the company announced today.

The service is designed to allow "close friends and family members" to share a library of games while Steam tracks achievements and save data for each individual user, said Valve in a press release.

"Our customers have expressed a desire to share their digital games among friends and family members, just as current retail games, books, DVDs, and other physical media can be shared," said Valve's Anna Sweet. "Family Sharing was created in direct response to these user requests."

According to Valve's FAQ for Steam Family Sharing, a user can authorize his or her entire Steam library —...

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All the Adventure Time glasses you will ever need

1. Set of 4 (Jake, Finn, Marceline, Lady Rainicorn)
2. Finn Face
3. Jake Face
4. Lump Off!
5. Bro Hug
6. Adventure Time with Ice King
7. Adventure Time Group
8. Set of 4 (BMO, Finn, Jake, LSP faces)
9. Jake and Finn Pilsner

Simutronics' upcoming free-to-play aerial shooter, Dragons of Elanthia, was created to fill a very dragon-lacking space, developer Brett Sweeney told us during a recent interview.

We spoke with Sweeney at PAX Prime 2013, where the developer had its game on-hand at the Indie Megabooth. Dragons of Elanthia is a multiplayer-based title where players select a rider and saddle up on a dragon of their choice. According to Sweeney, the fantasy twist was added because dragons are underused in shooters, and the developer wanted to use them "if no one else was going to."

"We haven't seen a dragon game even made in long time," Sweeney said. "We wanted to make a dragon game that could capture acrobatic, draconic combat. But instead of just having...

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Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas and Magic 2013 will be free for Xbox Live Gold members worldwide throughout the month of September, Microsoft announced today on Xbox Wire.

Starting tomorrow and until Sept. 15, Games with Gold will feature Magic 2013, regularly priced at $9.99. The game is an extension of the video game version of Magic: The Gathering, and features a new, simplified tutorial system, 10 customizable card decks and an online multiplayer mode, Planechase.

Rainbow Six Vegas, which initially launched in Nov. 2006, will be available for free between Sept. 16 and 30. Players will defend Las Vegas and its iconic locations from a wave of terrorist activity. The title normally costs $19.99.

Both games are available to download...

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Bozo Helps Dinky Toot His Horn

via

According to the German WoW fansite Gamona.de's interview with Tom Chilton, patch 5.4 has been pushed back to September 10th in the US, and September 11th in Europe.

This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, as Blizzard often moves the dates for patch releases around as they work out all the last bugs before release. Later today Olivia Grace has an interview with Chilton and will be asking directly, in English, to confirm this news. However unlike eastern languages, there's a lot less lost in translation when interviewing in German, so we believe this has a high probability of being factual.

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Filed under: News items

Patch 5.4 pushed back two weeks to September 10? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 21 Aug 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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G-G the book - G-G on Facebook - G-G on Twitter

In the 1960s, biologist Karen Pryor was training two female rough-toothed dolphins to perform in a show at Hawaii’s Sea Life Park. Each dolphin had a different repertoire, and they were trained separately, though they could watch one another through a gate.

At one performance something was clearly wrong — each animal did everything she was asked to do, but with great agitation and sometimes in the wrong sequence. Pryor confessed her puzzlement to the audience and was pleased when the show concluded successfully. Afterward her assistant said, “Do you know what happened?”

“No.”

“We got the animals mixed up. Someone put Malia in Hou’s holding tank and Hou in Malia’s holding tank. They look so much alike now, I just never thought of that.”

Each dolphin had performed the other’s act, with no prior training, having only observed it in the earlier sessions. Hou had duplicated tricks that Malia herself had invented, an upside-down jump, a corkscrew, and coasting with her tail in the air, and Malia, wearing a blindfold, had retrieved three sinking rings in a sonar demonstration. Hou had jumped through a hoop held 6 feet above the water, a feat that normally requires weeks to train.

“I stopped the departing audience and told them what they had just seen,” Pryor wrote. “I’m not sure how many understood or believed it. I still hardly believe it myself.”

(From Pryor’s 1975 book Lads Before the Wind, quoted in Thomas I. White’s In Defense of Dolphins, 2007.)

"We have been very clear, we understand that used games are a way for some consumers to monetize their games," Fils-Aime said. "They will buy a game, play it, bring it back to their retailer to get credit for their next purchase. Certainly, that impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content. Why is that? Because the replayability of our content is super strong. The consumer wants to keep playing Mario Kart. The consumer want to keep playing New Super Mario Bros. They want to keep playing Pikmin. So we see that the trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average – much, much less. So for us, we have been able...

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My friends and I used to play videogames all the time, squashed together on the couch, engaged in structured intellectual discourse about exactly how badly we were going to destroy each other. Now that we live spread out around the world, it’s a bit harder to dance in each other’s faces and yell “booyah!” every time we win a game. Enter: Cube Slam.


Cube Slam is a video game that you can play face-to-face against your friends. It’s a Chrome Experiment built using WebRTC, an open web technology that lets you video chat right in the browser without installing any plug-ins. That means you can quickly and easily play Cube Slam with your friends, no matter where they are in the world, just by sharing a link.


To win Cube Slam, hit the cube against your friend’s screen three times until the screen explodes. Shields, obstacles, and gravity fields change with every new level, and you can unlock power-ups including fireballs, lasers, multi-balls, mirrored controls, bulletproof shields, fog, ghost balls, time bombs, resized paddles, extra lives and death balls––though you might want to avoid the death balls. If none of your friends are online, you can always play against Bob the Bear and see what level you can reach. If you install the Cube Slam app, you can even play Bob when you’re offline.


Cube Slam’s graphics are rendered in WebGL and CSS 3D, and its custom soundtrack is delivered dynamically through Web Audio. WebRTC, which enables the two-person game, is available on desktop Chrome and Chrome OS, and will be available on mobile later this year. In the meantime, you can play Cube Slam against Bob the Bear on your phone or tablet. To learn more about what’s going on under the hood, see our technology page and Chromium blog post.

Play a friend. Play a bear. Have fun!

Posted by Clem Wright, Google Creative Lab, Ursine Diversion Division

Oh who that ever lived and loved
Can look upon an egg unmoved?
The egg it is the source of all,
‘Tis everyone’s ancestral hall.
The bravest chief that ever fought,
The lowest thief that e’er was caught,
The harlot’s lip, the maiden’s leg,
They each and all come from an egg.

The rocks that once by ocean’s surge
Beheld the first of eggs emerge –
Obscure, defenseless, small and cold –
They little knew what egg could hold.
The gifts the reverent Magi gave,
Pandora’s box, Aladdin’s cave,
Wars, loves, and kingdoms, heaven and hell
All lay within that tiny shell.

Oh, join me gentlemen, I beg,
In honoring our friend, the egg.

– Clarence Day, Scenes From the Mesozoic, 1935

Washing the Cat.

August 2, 1970 — see The Complete Peanuts 1967-1970

That’s the look of a woman who just realized that if she shot him, she would lose 145 pounds just like that. 

When James Harrison had chest surgery at age 13, he resolved to begin donating blood to help others in need. When he did so, doctors realized that he carries a rare immune globulin that can prevent unborn babies from suffering attacks by their mothers’ antibodies, a condition known as Rhesus disease.

In the 59 years since this was discovered, Harrison has given blood more than 1,000 times, an average of once every three weeks for five decades, and his donations have saved an estimated 2.4 million babies.

This has earned Harrison a spot in Guinness World Records. He calls this “the only record that I hope is broken.”

In recognition of Memorial Day, our postcard feature for Flashback Friday this week depicts the Worth Bagley monument, located on Capitol Square. Most folks these days probably have never heard of him, but at the turn of the 20th century Ensign Worth Bagley, USN, was a highly regarded hero of the Spanish-American War.

As was common with many postcard greetings of the era, our correspondent, ‘Grace,’ didn’t reference the image on the front of the card at all.

Rec’d your card yesterday and was indeed glad to hear from you. Am so sorry I didn’t see you while in Asheville. And am having a big time. [illegible] School is [illegible] and we are having a great time. Much Love. Grace Ransom

Worth Bagley — A Hometown Hero

Worth Bagley was born into a prominent Raleigh family in 1874. His grandfather was Gov. Jonathan Worth, and his father, W.H. Bagley, had been a major in the Confederate army. His older sister married Josephus Daniels, owner and editor of the politically influential News & Observer. Bagley entered the U.S. Naval Academy as a teenager in 1891, and graduated in 1895. He was commissioned an ensign in 1897. That same year, 23-year old Ensign Bagley was assigned as the second-in-command officer of the torpedo boat USS Winslow.

Torpedo boat USS Winslow in action.

The sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in February 1898 precipitated the Spanish-American War. On May 11, 1898, under heavy fire from Spanish gunboats in Cardenas Harbor, Ensign Bagley and four shipmates onboard the USS Winslow lost their lives. He was the first American officer and the only line officer of the U.S. Navy killed during the war.

On the day of Ensign Bagley’s funeral in Raleigh, his body was escorted by the Governor’s Guard in a procession up Fayetteville St. to the Capitol where he lay in state in the rotunda. Schools and businesses closed and thousands turned out for his funeral on the capitol grounds.

Ensign Worth Bagley, Raleigh’s fallen hero.

In 1899 the General Assembly voted to erect a memorial on the Capitol grounds to honor the young ensign. The Bagley Monument Association raised the necessary funds and commissioned sculptor Francis H. Packer to design the monument. He created a bronze statue of Bagley which stands atop a rectangular granite base embellished with a bronze relief of an anchor, symbolic of both the US Navy and hope.

The dedication of the Worth Bagley monument took place on May 20, 1907. The News & Observer gushed poetically:

Fayetteville Street … [is] a revel of red, white and blue, the folds of hundreds of United States flags flying in abandon in the soft breezes of springtime. … On the south front of the Capitol two beautiful North Carolina flags add to the effect, which, set in nature’s offering of full foliaged trees, a carpet of green, and hundreds of rose bushes with the first offering of spring, is one that is beautiful in the extreme.

And, as they had nine years earlier for his funeral, thousands of Raleighites, along with state and local dignitaries, Navy officials and uniformed servicemen turned out on Capitol Square for the dedication ceremony of the Worth Bagley monument. Gov. Robert Brodnax Glenn was the keynote speaker. Bagley’s eight-year old nephew, Worth Bagley Daniels, assisted in the unveiling of the statue of his uncle.

The US Navy named three vessels in honor of Ensign Worth Bagley — a torpedo boat (1900) and two destroyers (1918 and 1937). Raleigh’s hometown hero is buried in Oakwood Cemetery, along with his parents, grandfather, and other members of the Bagley, Daniels and Worth families.

 

Our Flashback Friday ‘divided back’ postcard this week was published by F.M. Kirby & Co. of Wilkes-Barre, PA..

Fred Morgan Kirby 1887-1997
Wilkes-Barre, PA

A publisher and large retailer of postcard views of the American South and mid-Atlantic region. These cards were sold from their Five & Dime stores which numbered 96 in 1912.

 

“Flashback Friday” is a weekly feature of Goodnight, Raleigh! in which we showcase vintage postcards depicting our historic capital city. We hope you enjoy this week end treat!

 

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Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy HD, the iOS version of the first three games in the investigative series, will arrive on iOS next Thursday, May 30, according to a post on Capcom Unity.

The first two cases of the first game will be free. Players who enjoy the courtroom drama can then unlock the full first game for $5.99. The next two installments will be available for $6.99 each, and you'll also be able to buy the trilogy for $16.99.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy HD has also been "fully optimized for iOS," with retina display graphics and social features like the "Everyone Object" mode, which "allows players to share dissatisfaction with everyday life, Phoenix-style."

Today's announcement overrules an April announcement...

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Continue reading Deepwind Gorge: Simple strategy guide

Filed under: PvP

Deepwind Gorge: Simple strategy guide originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 23 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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